


Your Wisdom and Your Waywardness

by inexplicifics



Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [29]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Culture Shock, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Halloween, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Seven times the Witchers of Kaer Morhen confused the hell out of their new human companions, and one time the humans confused them right back.
Series: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683661
Comments: 122
Kudos: 2407





	Your Wisdom and Your Waywardness

**Cat**

“Master Jan? There’s a Witcher in the rafters and we aren’t sure what to do.”

“There’s a what now?” Jan asks, and follows the worried chambermaid into the great hall. She stops just inside the doorway and points upward, and Jan follows her finger to see a Witcher lounging on one of the great oaken beams up near the ceiling, arms and legs hanging down, apparently fast asleep. He looks like nothing so much as a cat on a tree branch, lazy and contented with the world.

Jan stares for a little while, and then shrugs. “I guess just...leave him be?” he tells the girl. “He’s doing no harm up there.”

“Alright,” the girl says, nodding hesitantly, and goes to join her fellows scrubbing down the tables, all of them casting wary glances up at the sleeping Witcher in the rafters, who doesn’t so much as twitch.

After the first few times, the humans all start to get used to it. Cat Witchers like sleeping in the rafters; it doesn’t do any harm, and it’s mildly amusing if they wake up by rolling off the beam and have to catch themselves one-handed in midair. Several of the chambermaids learn some very good new swear-words that way.

**Manticore**

“‘Tisn’t that I mind them using the space,” Tadeusz says, “I just worry about someone tapping the wrong keg.”

“Why so?” Jan asks, following the larderer into the big cellar they use to store the kegs of small beer and good dark ale.

“Well, y’see,” Tadeusz says, and gestures towards the line of kegs along one wall, each with a neatly hand-lettered slate hung on a nail driven into the top. Jan leans forward, squinting in the dimness.

_White Gull batch 28-05, arsenic and juniper_ , reads the first one. The next one is _White Gull batch 28-06, hemlock_. And after that, _White Gull batch 28-07, belladonna concentrate_.

“What,” Jan says, and decides this is worth swearing. “What the _fuck_.”

“I don’t know,” Tadeusz says. “But I druther not have it in my _cellar_.”

“No more would I,” Jan says, and goes to find Eskel, who hears him out and nods.

“That’d be the Manticores, then,” he says, without seeming bothered by the barrels of poisonous alcohol in the cellar. “They like adding interesting flavorings.”

“Interesting,” Jan says, staring in horror.

“Won’t hurt _us_ any,” Eskel says, shrugging. “I’ll have them use a separate storage room, if you like.”

“Yes, please,” Jan says, and goes to tell Tadeusz the good news, and also have a bit of the human-safe whiskey they keep for special occasions.

**Bear**

“I know the Witchers like to care for their own horses, I don’t see why this is a problem,” Jan says, following Andrzej into the stables a bit reluctantly. The man’s a damn good stablemaster but does get a bit overwrought about things like the Witchers preferring not to leave much work for his grooms -

Jan stops dead, staring. “Oh,” he says at last.

“Yes, _oh_ ,” Andrzej says. “I am honored to care for the horses of our lords, even if they will not allow us to groom them, but I draw the line at a godsdamned _elk_.”

“Whose...elk...is it?” Jan asks.

“Bran of the Bears*.”

“I’ll...talk to Eskel about this,” Jan says, baffled beyond measure.

“A what now?” Eskel says, half an hour later.

“An elk,” Jan says again.

“An elk,” Eskel repeats. “One of the Bears has gotten himself a _riding elk._ Well. That’s...new. I’ll talk to Artek. Tell Andrzej that Bran will care for his elk himself, and none of the grooms are required to do so.”

Jan bows himself out, still boggling.

**Crane**

“Papa?” Julita’s voice comes from the doorway, and Jan blinks himself groggily awake and sits up. “I heard a _noise_.”

“What sort of noise, sweetling?” Jan asks, opening his arms as Julita comes scrambling up onto the bed.

“A ‘splosion,” Julita says.

Julita’s room has a window, because she enjoys looking at the stars and it puts Jan’s room between hers and the corridor. Jan picks her up and gets his feet into his thick fur-lined slippers and goes padding through to her room, opening the shutters and peering out. Far below, in the courtyard, he can faintly hear someone arguing.

“Go back to bed, sweetling, I’ll go see what that was about,” he says, tucking Julita carefully back under the covers. “I’m sure it was just a mistake.”

“Alright, Papa,” Julita says, snuggling down obediently. Jan kisses her forehead and pulls on a thick dressing gown and goes out into the chilly corridors of the keep.

Down in the courtyard, half a dozen Cranes are arguing at the top of their lungs. Jan stands in the doorway listening for a while. As best he can make out, someone was trying to test a new type of flare suitable for luring heat-seeking creatures at night, and it had not quite functioned as desired.

He steps out onto the front stairs after a while, and six pairs of slitted eyes turn to stare at him. “Gentlemen,” he says. “You woke my daughter.”

“Oh _shit_ ,” one of the Cranes blurts. “We didn’t even think.”

“Wait,” Jan hears one of them mutter to another, “isn’t his daughter _Letho’s_ -” The other nods vigorously. The first looks suddenly worried.

“Perhaps a little warning before you test your next invention?” Jan suggests.

“What he said,” someone calls down from up one of the towers, and Jan looks up to see Lambert leaning out of a window, silhouetted against the half-full moon. “You fuckers woke me up!”

“Right, next time we’ll give a bit of warning,” the spokes-Crane says. “Or we could go test it up in that valley, you know the one -” he turns back to his fellows, who are all nodding vigorously.

“I bet we could get some really good elevation from that one ledge,” one of the other Cranes puts in eagerly, and Jan shakes his head and goes back to bed.

**Wolf**

“Ah,” Jan says, pausing in the doorway and blinking at the three Witchers in the kitchen. “My lords?”

“Not lords,” Lambert says, looking up. “What’s the matter?”

“You...seem to have forgotten to cook your suppers,” Jan says.

Lambert looks down at the raw venison steak in his hands. “Oh,” he says. “Uh. Shit. Oops?”

Gweld and Gascaden both give Jan sheepish looks. “We were hungry,” Gweld says apologetically.

“...Raw venison is generally not...a good thing to eat,” Jan says slowly.

“Eh, Witchers can eat just about anything,” Gascaden says, shrugging. “But I guess we could sear these.”

“Don’t let me prevent you from your supper,” Jan says, and excuses himself politely. The next morning, he suggests to Marlene that she start keeping some prepared food - and a _lot_ of venison jerky - in a cupboard near the kitchen doors.

**Viper**

“Jan, my girls are going to flee the godsdamned _keep_ if you don’t fix this,” Aniela says, stomping into Jan’s office.

“...Fix what?” Jan asks warily. “I thought we’d figured out the ichor issue?”

“Oh, no, that’s fine,” Aniela says, waving a hand dismissively. “The new dye means it’s a hell of a lot easier to get things clean - or at least the stains don’t _show_ , which is just as good really. No, it’s the damned _daggers._ ”

“Ah,” Jan says, because he _does_ know what she means. The Viper Witchers are prone to hiding daggers... _everywhere_. Jan has learned to be very careful about putting his hand under a table or a bench, or on the underside of a railing, or behind a cabinet, because there’s usually a blade hidden just out of sight. “In the laundry, too?”

“They’ve all got half a hundred little pockets sewn into their clothes, and they _never_ get all the daggers out,” Aniela says. “One of my girls nearly got her foot nailed to the floor when one fell out!”

“I’ll speak to Ivar,” Jan promises.

“See that you do,” Aniela sniffs, and stomps out again.

Ivar Evil-Eye may look as nasty as his name suggests, but he hears Jan out solemnly, and nods when Jan finishes. “I’ll have a word with my snakelings,” he promises. “Having people to do our laundry is a luxury they won’t want to lose. And I’ll do something about them leaving knives everywhere, too.”

“Thank you,” Jan says, bowing his way gratefully out.

The Vipers _do_ stop leaving daggers in their clothing, for the most part. And Jan has to admit that while it’s not quite the solution he expected, the fact that all the hidden knives around the keep now have _sheaths_ is a distinct improvement nonetheless.

**Griffin**

The bizarre thing about Griffins, Jan realizes a few years into his tenure as the Warlord’s Steward, is that they _aren’t_ bizarre. They eat their meat well-cooked, they sleep in beds, they never bring strange animals into the keep, they drink White Gull happily enough but don’t seem to want to add extra poison to it, they never blow things up in the middle of the night, and they certainly don’t leave daggers hidden in their laundry.

When they ask for goose feathers, it’s to re-stuff a pillow. Oil is for polishing their swords. (Or other private activities - Jan doesn’t ask. Whatever they are, they don’t involve turning an entire hallway into an oiled slide, so he doesn’t really care.) Leather is for armor-repair, not for whatever the hell that giant flapping contraption the Cranes came up with was.

The Griffins act like...well, not like knights. Jan has met knights, and they were mostly quite unpleasant people, high on their own perceived power over the peasantry around them. Griffins act like a ballad’s _ideal_ of knights, honorable and honest and chivalrous, polite to everyone, protective of the weak, straightforward in their dealings.

Which come to think of it might be the oddest thing of all, to find true knights behind the slitted yellow eyes of Witchers.

**Humans**

“That’s a lot of turnips,” Letho says, dumping another sack into the cellar with a grunt.

“Yes, well, we’ll need them for carving,” Jan says absently, tallying the sack on his slate.

“...Carving?” Letho asks.

“For the Feast of the Hallowed Dead?” Jan says, blinking up at the big Viper. “Next month? Julita wants to be a snake.”

“ _What?_ ” Letho says. “Shit, no, she can’t - Vipers don’t take girls and I wouldn’t let her even if we _did_ , fuck no -”

“Whoa,” Jan says, holding up a hand. “What? Julita doesn’t want to be a Witcher.”

“You said she wants to be a snake!”

“...She wants to _dress_ as a snake. For the Feast of the Hallowed Dead.”

Jan and Letho blink at each other for a few minutes. Several more Witchers skirt around them to put their burdens down along the cellar walls. “Explain,” Letho growls at last, crossing his arms across his chest and glowering.

“The Feast of the Hallowed Dead is a harvest festival,” Jan says. “The priestesses say the veil between worlds is thin then. We carve turnips into faces to scare off evil spirits, and our children dress as monsters or animals and are given extra sweets to placate them, and get to stay up late and dance around a bonfire and pretend to be terrifying. And there’s a feast - Marlene’s already planning it.”

“Oh,” Letho says, shoulders slumping in obvious relief. “Guess I never saw one of those. Witchers try to stay away from festivals, usually; saves being driven out with pitchforks for bein’ bad luck.”

“Well _that’s_ nonsense, Witchers are the best luck this continent’s ever had,” Jan says briskly. “You can come and help Julita carve a turnip a few days before the festival, if you like.”

“...Sure,” Letho says, looking baffled but pleased, and goes tromping out to bring in the next load of supplies, and Jan goes back to tallying the crates and barrels that have come in while they were talking, shaking his head a little. Witchers know so much, about so many things, and have such _interesting_ gaps in their knowledge. Jan feels a little like he’s walking across a meadow littered with rabbit-holes, sometimes; he never knows when he’s going to trip over some unexpected void.

Julita makes a very sweet little snake, and Letho’s carved turnip holds pride of place on her windowsill for many days, grinning crookedly out into the night to keep her safe.

**Author's Note:**

> *Bran of the Bears is from witcherfics' delightful [A Mount As Fierce As A Bear](https://witcherfics.tumblr.com/post/626111542671343616/a-mount-as-fierce-as-a-bear).
> 
> Thank you all for your comments, kudos, and support; they're what's keeping me going during these chaotic times. Please feel free to come and say hello over on tumblr or discord!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Your Wisdom and Your Waywardness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27320806) by [AceOfTigers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceOfTigers/pseuds/AceOfTigers)




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